I. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to monitoring system and, more particularly, to a machine monitoring system which monitors required maintenance, part inspection or other reminder for the machine operator.
II. Description of the Prior Art
Many manufacturing facilities include numerous machines which performs cyclic work operations. Such machines can include, for example, boring machines, cutting machines, milling machines and the like,
Such industrial manufacturing machines require periodic maintenance to ensure not only that the manufactured parts remain within required tolerances, but also for optimum operation of the manufacturing machine. For example, for a boring machine it may be determined that the cutter must be sharpened and/or replaced after a predetermined number of cyclic operation for the machine. If the cutter is not sharpened or replaced after performing the predetermined number of cyclic operations, the parts manufactured by the machine may fall outside the required manufacturing tolerances. Similarly, use of a resharpenable tool beyond its resharpen cycle limit can result in permanent and uncorrectablc damage to the tool.
It has been the previous practice for many manufacturing facilities or factories to simply schedule periodic maintenance for the various machines at predetermined time intervals. For example, the cutter or cutters on a particular boring machine may be simply replaced and/or sharpened every eight hours in order to maintain the machined parts within desired manufacturing tolerances. This approach, however, is disadvantageous for a number of reasons.
First, the most important factor for required periodic maintenance is the number of work cycles performed by the machine since the last maintenance operation. In some instances, the machine may be idle for an extended period of time so that performing maintenance on the machine at predetermined time intervals results in excessive and unnecessary maintenance on the machine. This, in turn, increases the overall maintenance cost for the machine and is, therefore, undesirable.
Conversely, the machine may undergo an abnormally large number of work cycles between scheduled maintenance. When this occurs, insufficient maintenance is performed on the machine which can disadvantageously result in unacceptable machined parts.